Help! 2 identical websites

Nothing wrong with having the "same" site across country boards,
if the site is country specific. Same is in quotes on purpose.

However, the .com.au really should be skewed, almost entirely,
for Australia.

A dot com can appear anywhere in the world.

A .com.au can appear anywhere in the world.

For someone searching from Australia for Australia specific
stuff, a .com.au may show up more. This would
be especially true if searching from google.com.au.
But, if the dot com was also geared to Australians, the
dot com would show.

But Australia is one of those countries where dot coms or
dot whatevers are just as likely to appear. And if the sites
were carbon copies, the dot com would certainly get more
weight at the present time.

I can't see a reason for doing both sites and making them
exact copies.

Logic holds that if this idea was good, then everybody would be
preaching to make copies of their websites with country specific
extensions.

In fact, if the site is Australia specific, I'd do a 301 redirect
from the dot com to the .com.au. That's the advice you should
give him.

Paul

no problems with having identical websites however you didn't mention if your friend wanted to phase .com out and replace it with .com.au...
either way add .com.au to G webmaster tools and set the region to Australia (

settings > geo target) that will give more weight in case users are from Australia.